Christine Wilhelm, the mother who stands accused of
murdering her four-year old son Luke by drowning him in a
bathtub in their home near Vermont on April 16th, 2002, has
become the latest poster girl of the mental health field
establishment. Like Andrea Yates, she is the newest epitome
of a profession, which has long since "lost its marbles"in
a manner of speaking.

Wilhelm's psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Price
has just testified before the court that his client was unable to distinguish
right from wrong at the time of the incident. Please bear
in mind that she pled not guilty by reason of insanity at
her arraignment hearing. This is certainly a chilling
reminder of the events of the Andrea Yates Trial, in which
that mother claimed that she was "convinced" that the devil
was tormenting her five children and told her to kill them.
Let's not forget that she was convicted of drowning her
five children in that case.

Wilhelm even
testified
before the jury that she committed
the murder and attempted to drown her other son Peter (who
was five at the time) in an attempt to "save" them from her
husband Kenneth Wilhelm, who was said to have been sexually
abusing them. (This was actually repudiated by the
authorities during the investigation.)

Park Dietz, the famed forensic psychiatrist who examined
famous murderers such as Andrea Yates, Susan Smith, and
Jeffrey Dahmer, made a 10-hour videotaped interview with
Wilhelm (the tape was played before the jury last week by
the way) and
testified
before the court that she was
capable of determining right from wrong. Moreover, while
we're on the subject, he then admitted to the court that he
wasn't, according to Yahoo News, able to determine "whether
the defendant knew the difference between right and wrong
at the time of the killing."

But didn't both Dietz and Price testify that Wilhelm
suffered from schizophrenia at the time? They most
certainly did. Of course they even said that it was,
according to Yahoo News, "possible that she wasn't able to
tell the difference between right and wrong" when she
killed her young, little son.

Oh, and while we're at it, Wilhelm's defense attorney
Jerome Frost publicly noted early on in the trial that she
"believed" that her husband and several members of a
Satanic cult (of whom her husband was allegedly a member)
were "going to torture the children" and "make them ritual
human sacrifices."

If one takes a good hard look at this case, he can easily
surmise that this is eerily equivalent to a modern, secular
form of demonic possession. Psychiatrists and psychologists
are today's secular version of Catholic priests and exorcists.
Those statements were indeed made during the proceedings.
But don't they prove anything about Wilhelm? No, not at all.

Psychiatrists are not experts in mental illness, regardless
of what they claim. They don't see this so-called
condition. In their eyes, the only things they do see and
hear are behavior and speech. Ergo the assertion that Dr.
Price makesone in which he initially says that she
couldn't distinguish right from wrongis not based on
real, legitimate science but rather on junk science and an
unfounded leap of faith. It signifies an inference from
behavior to disease without any documented, scientific
facts to support it.

That leads us to an important question here: aren't "mental
illnesses" brain diseases? That is precisely what the
mental health profession repetitiously tells us,
considering that an enormous amount of tax subsidies has a
great deal of influence on this issue. However, if "mental
illnesses" are really brain disorders as we are led to
believe, then why is it that pathologists never find them
during autopsies?

True brain disorders are not legitimate justifications for
murder or even attempted murder. Genuine disorders, such as
Parkinson's, epilepsy, and Tourette's Syndrome, can't be
used to cop the insanity plea when sufferers of those
conditions commit murder. (Bear in mind that they can't be
coerced to accept treatment against their will.)

Prominent libertarian psychiatrist and psychiatric pundit
Dr. Thomas Szasz notes that true brain illnesses can induce
paralysis or even unconsciousness, but they cannot compel
one to act against his own will. Such a course of action,
he points out, requires a choice based on morality and a
conscious act of volition on his part. For that reason it
is why we hold individuals accountable for their own
actions. False brain illnesses and unproven mental
illnesses, when disguised as "brain disorders" and "mental
illnesses," should never be employed to absolve people from
their crimes. (Face itthe mind is not a real, human
organ.)

According to Dr. Lawrence Stevens, J.D. at
the Antipsychiatry Coalition,
the blind faith in mental illness
"as a nonbiological entity requires a more lengthy
refutation than the biological argument." He even goes onto
state the following: "People are thought of as mentally ill
only when their thinking, emotions, or behavior is contrary
to what is considered acceptable, that is, when others (or
the so-called patients themselves) dislike something about
them. One way to show the absurdity of calling something
an illness not because it is caused by a biological
abnormality but only because we dislike it or disapprove of
it is to look at how values differ from one culture to
another and how values change over time."

The public reaction to Wilhelm and others of her ilk tells
us more about ourselves than about her. We would rather
believe that vile acts are correlated to illness rather
than to evil people. Why are we as a society willing to
bank on the belief that she couldn't help herself and that
there was no way she could have committed these crimes as a
matter of choice? The reason is that we cannot imagine any
other reason for these barbaric acts. It's not surprising,
considering that individuals are reasonably accustomed to
life's daily responsibilities, rigors, and conflicts and
that they would have great difficulty in seeing that. This
truly affirms that life has its complications, especially
when they include human abilities to muddle their way
through them.

And while we utilize the copout that the human mind can
become ill and force people to become dangerous, just to
shield murderous criminals from the consequences of their
crimes, we use the mental health laws at our disposallaws
which mandate the incarceration (in the guise of
"hospital commitment") of law-abiding citizens.